Novelgate: Allen vs. Webb

The Latest:

• Jim Webb hit back hard against the George Allen-induced controversy over Webb's critically acclaimed - though bizarre - war novels. "To take these things out and pull excerpts out and force them on people . . . is just a classic example of the way this campaign is run," Webb said. "Literature is literature. I've made my career as a novelist. George Allen doesn't have a record to run on." He then blasted Lynne Cheney for her steamy writings. "You can read Lynne Cheney's lesbian sex scenes if you want to get graphic on stuff." Ouch.

• Webb's campaign also issued a press release that told Allen and "his campaign hit men" to - literally - "shut up" with their outrage over the books.

• Allen says that the inclusion of steamy and lurid scene in his novels show "bad character".

• Lynne Cheney proceeded to respond with her own rant defending her novels. This from CNN's "The Situation Room" this afternoon. There is also video at the same link.
• BLITZER: Here’s what the Democratic Party put out today, the Democratic Congressional — Senatorial Campaign Committee: “Lynne Cheney’s book featured brothels and attempted rape. In 1981, Vice
  President Dick Cheney’s wife, Lynne, wrote a book called “Sisters”, which featured a lesbian love affair, brothels and attempted rapes.”
  CHENEY: No.
  BLITZER: “In 1988, Lynn Cheney wrote about a Republican vice president who dies of a heart attack while having sex with his mistress.” Is that true?
  CHENEY: Nothing explicit. And actually, that was full of lies. It’s not — it’s just — it’s absolutely not a…
  BLITZER: Did you write a book entitled “Sisters”?
  CHENEY: I did write a book entitled “Sisters.”
  BLITZER: It did have lesbian characters.
  CHENEY: This — no, not necessarily. This description is a lie. I’ll stand on that.

• "Lost Soldiers", the most controversial of Webb's novels, is rated 4 stars on amazon.com, were it's available for $7.50. GOP Sen. John McCain gave the book a solid blurb of praise when it came out : “James Webb’s new novel paints a portrait of a modern Vietnam charged with hopes for the future but haunted by the ghosts of its war-torn past. It captures well the lingering scars of the war, and exposes the tension between the dynamism of a new generation and the invisible bondage of an older generation for whom wartime allegiances, and animosities, are rendered no less vivid by the passage of time. A novel of revenge and redemption that tells us much about both where Vietnam is headed and where it has been.”